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Men are simple. At least that’s what the consensus on the Internet would have us believe. Pop culture—from 19th-century novels to 21st-century Reels—has worked overtime to paint men as uncomplicated creatures, while women are written as complex, layered, mysterious beings, existing on a spectrum of emotions. But is male simplicity real, or just a mask for something darker, stranger, and more unstable?
Tim Robinson’s Friendship, produced by A24 and co-starring Paul Rudd, cracks open that stereotype with a jagged knife. What spills out is messy and unsettling: a black comedy about lonely, insecure, desperate men, and the spiraling chaos that follows when one mistakes a neighbourly connection for salvation.
The setup could pass for a sitcom. Craig (Robinson), a suburban marketing executive, is emotionally adrift. His marriage to Tami (Kate Mara) is collapsing, and she’s reconnecting with her ex. Then comes Austin (Rudd), a charismatic local weatherman who moves in next door. On paper, the two couldn’t be more different. Austin is sunny, sociable, the kind of man who thrives at barbecues and boys’ nights. Craig is awkward, needy, and suffocating.
At first, Friendship feels like a spiritual cousin to buddy comedies like I Love You, Man—movies about grown men fumbling their way into platonic intimacy. But Robinson and first-time feature film director Andrew DeYoung take that familiar template and stretch it into something unnerving. When Craig starts showing up uninvited, when he breaks into Austin’s home, when he tries to insert himself into Austin’s social circle, the laughs don’t land comfortably. They come jagged, laced with the squirmy feeling of watching someone lose their grip on dignity.
Robinson has built his reputation on weaponising awkwardness. His Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave mined humiliation and overreaction until they became absurdist art forms. Here, that persona is fully realised in a feature-length narrative. His Craig isn’t just a buffoon for us to laugh at, he’s a portrait of male fragility, played with such nervous energy that every scene teeters between slapstick and tragedy.
Rudd, on the other hand, is pitch-perfect casting. Hollywood’s eternal nice guy, Rudd plays Austin with his usual charm, but under Robinson’s chaotic orbit, that niceness feels sinister. He becomes less a character than a projection, a mirror reflecting Craig’s insecurities back at him. Rudd doesn’t need to do much, his mere existence in Craig’s world is enough to destabilise it.
It’s impossible to miss what Friendship is really about. Beneath its cringe and chaos, the film is a biting exploration of male loneliness and the stigma around male vulnerability. Craig isn’t just seeking companionship–he’s seeking validation that he still matters, that someone might choose him. His obsession is ridiculous, yes, but it’s also painfully human.
DeYoung and Robinson never make the mistake of turning this into a lecture. Instead, they wrap the theme in surreal sequences, Craig crawling through underground tunnels, karaoke sing-alongs to Ghost Town DJs’ My Boo, that capture the way loneliness can warp reality. In another film, these moments would feel gimmicky. Here, they are the very language of Craig’s unravelling mind.
The film’s tonal balance is its greatest strength and, occasionally, its biggest stumbling block. The first half leans hard into cringe comedy, pulling the audience along with exaggerated awkwardness that feels almost unbearable. Then, in the latter half, the humour bleeds into dread. Craig’s social collapse peaks in a party scene where his desperation turns violent. He brandishes a gun, not as a killer, but as a man so terrified of invisibility that he’d rather be monstrous than forgotten.
It’s a shocking tonal shift, and not every viewer will buy it. Some may feel the film loses its rhythm here, sacrificing laughs for nihilism. But that discomfort is the point. Friendship isn’t meant to be palatable. It’s meant to make you wince at your own chuckles, to recognise how close laughter and horror sit when men’s desperation boils over.
If buddy comedies like Superbad or Step Brothers celebrated male bonding as goofy catharsis, Friendship feels closer to Taxi Driver in suburban drag. It’s a satire of the “sad man comedy,” echoing Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker but swapping nihilism for absurdism. It also recalls Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, with its surreal take on modern alienation. Yet Robinson’s stamp ensures it remains unique, nobody else makes failure this funny or this frightening.
What makes Friendship special is not just its comedy, but its honesty. It understands that male loneliness doesn’t announce itself with tragic violins, it sneaks out in dad jokes, in neighbourly barbecues, in karaoke nights that turn into breakdowns. It shows us the absurdity of craving friendship like oxygen, and the chaos that follows when that craving curdles into obsession.
The movie lingers because it doesn’t let you off the hook. It forces you to think about the men you know, the co-worker who lingers too long at your desk, the neighbour who overshares, the friend who texts at odd hours. It dares you to wonder: how far away are they from Craig? How far are you?
Friendship
Friendship Cast – Tim Robinson, Kate Mara, Paul Rudd, Jack Dylan Grazer
Friendship Director – Andrew DeYoung
Friendship Rating – 3.5/5
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